Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Son-Rise Wide Awake Monday: strolling the Via Negativa

A personal record, Barry Neil ("Bears") Kaufman had the microphone in front of me a mere 36 minutes into the program. The fastest I've ever gotten to the core reason for being at a program. I admitted to being hiding, not fully committed to my life. That was why I was still eating junk food (among other things that aren't good for my body): a slow death by chocolate. I considered the gift of being alive,

and that every moment could be savored instead of feared. And then I stopped that train of thought and started to pout.

After 6 or 8 fellow participants shared variations on the same theme of "you're just doing X to get approval from Y instead of changing the belief" I shut down my brain. I decided that anyone who had a comment was just telling about themselves, and it was not anything to do with me. Even though some of them were, well, kinda on target. Each was sharing back to me the essence of the question that I'd come to examine, but I wanted the answer to be outside of myself.

I was so annoyed that I woke myself up early Tuesday at 5:30 a.m. so I'd have extra time to be annoyed. I grabbed my running shoes and headed straight for the exercise equipment. "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter came up on my iPod playlist, and I started sniffling and crying on the elliptical. Then I remembered that this was the reason I came and that there was a way to be comfortable and happy, if only I could figure out which belief I was uncovering.